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“In the entire world there are only a few sounds that bring joy to all but the most jaded. One is the murmur of a kitten purring. Another is the thwack of a well-pitched baseball hitting a perfectly swung bat. And the third is the pop of a cork being pulled from a bottle of wine.” —George Taber

noslensj

The Seattle wine.wooters were having a lovely time together last Saturday, enjoying the hospitality of kittymac and each other’s company, when to our surprise a caped monkey started knocking on the window of our room, making a tremendous racket. When we opened to door to see what was going on, he grinned at us, thrust a package into our hands, and monkey-walked across the patio to the street. Last glimpse I caught of him he had climbed on top of a Metro #2 line bus headed downtown, and he was doing an able job of dodging the live overhead streetcar wires.

*****

Inside the package was a bottle of 2010 Le Petit Coquerel Sauvignon Blanc, Napa Valley. The bottle was not refrigerated. We opened the bottle and poured about half of it. I estimate the bottle temp was about 65 °F. We then re-stoppered the bottle and put the remainder in the freezer to provide some cooling before the end of our time together.

The wine was a very pale yellow color, lighter than straw. Good clarity and some legginess. The nose was citrusy. I detected some herbaceousness, but couldn’t identify it. Kittymac suggested green pepper, and that seemed to me like it might fit. On the palate there was some sharpness, but decidedly less than in many sauvignon blancs. After the initial bite some roundedness appeared; the lessened bite and the roundedness made me wonder if there might be some partial MLF. There was also just a touch of a deeper bottom to the wine – not a fruity bottom but more like the pit of a stone fruit. I found the wine OK, but not exciting.

I finished the glass about 20 minutes later. By that time the sharpness had blown off, and the top and middle of the profile had gone totally flat and flabby; just a sense of fruitiness with no zip at all. That darker bottom had become more pronounced, with some distinct (phenolic?) bitterness. If there had been any wine left in my glass I would have poured it out. Until it lost the zip it worked fairly well with some sliced apples and cheese that we had available.

We returned to this wine after our first round of the zin that was provided, followed by a lovely JM dry rosé provided by jimjacks. What a guy!!! By this time the SB had chilled somewhat; I estimated it to be about 50 – 55 °F. The green pepper nose was now unmistakable to me, along with the citrus notes from before. The acidity was still there, perhaps a bit sharper. The green pepper notes carried through to the palate as well; the profile was the citrus and green pepper. The deeper bottom was very much muted. I had to duck out of the meeting to get to a social engagement that evening and I omitted making notes on this pour as it warmed up

The general impression of the group was that this wine smelled better than it tasted.

sanzam533

[quote postid="5578833" user="noslensj"]The Seattle wine.wooters were having a lovely time together last Saturday, enjoying the hospitality of kittymac and each other’s company, when to our surprise a caped monkey started knocking on the window of our room, making a tremendous racket. When we opened to door to see what was going on, he grinned at us, thrust a package into our hands, and monkey-walked across the patio to the street. Last glimpse I caught of him he had climbed on top of a Metro #2 line bus headed downtown, and he was doing an able job of dodging the live overhead streetcar wires.

jaimelobo

I hate when I come to Woot, see a French label, get all excited that Woot has a deal on something other than domestic stuff -- only to be crestfallen to find out it is just a CA winery being pretentious! :o)

br549oicu8

I am wondering why Kansas isn't on the list as approved for wine shipping. The State of Kansas approved these sales and shipments a couple of years ago. In fact, I have purchased wine on Woot before with no issue. I was told it was up to the winery, but after looking on the winery website, it must be a woot thing. Kansas is on the list as ok. Help me out here!!

kylemittskus

br549oicu8 wrote:I am wondering why Kansas isn't on the list as approved for wine shipping. The State of Kansas approved these sales and shipments a couple of years ago. In fact, I have purchased wine on Woot before with no issue. I was told it was up to the winery, but after looking on the winery website, it must be a woot thing. Kansas is on the list as ok. Help me out here!!

kaylyncoquerel

Hi. My name is Kaylyn Montgomery and I am from the winery!! Although we are have California fruit our winemaker, Christine Barbe is from Bordeaux and makes her wines in an old world style!

jaimelobo wrote:I hate when I come to Woot, see a French label, get all excited that Woot has a deal on something other than domestic stuff -- only to be crestfallen to find out it is just a CA winery being pretentious! :o)

kaylyncoquerel

Im sorry you didnt care for the wine! Different palates! Although, this wine is made in a stainless steel style with no malolactic fermentation.

confusedemmy wrote:I received a magic bottle of this last week. Nice color, good package, surprising viscosity and a grapefruit nose turned into flabby, overly malo SB that offered few reasons for me to purchase.

Sorry, woot, for the bad review, but this wasn't my cup of tea (or my spouses).

bwcockerell

Hi everyone, I'm Brenda Cockerell of Coquerel Family Wines. Hopefully I can clarify some of your questions. My husband and I wanted to make a French style Sauvignon Blanc from grapes grown in the Napa Valley; therefore, we chose the archaic French spelling of our name, Coquerel, for our label. We were fortunate to meet our winemaker, Christine Barbe who is from Bordeaux and holds a PhD from the University of Bordeaux. Christine oversees our fruit and vineyard from bud break to bottle...2010 was an extremely challenging vintage in Napa. Overall, the growing season was cold and wet, and ripening was very delayed. With Christine's guidance and careful management of the canopy, we were able to ripen our fruit while surviving a couple of dreadfully hot heat spikes in August. We do not blend to produce a style of wine, and each vintage of our Sauvignon Blanc is distinctive and reflective of the individual growing season and the terroir of the vineyard. We hope that you will enjoy the character of the wine. Le Petit Coquerel is bright with nice acidity and balance. It is aged sur lies 7-8 months (depending on the vintage) and is stirred weekly. Le Petit Coquerel is a handmade wine that marries beautifully with all forms of seafood, sushi, and appetizers. We hope you will enjoy it.

kaylyncoquerel

There are a few reasons for the pyrazine notes that you are smelling. The main reason is that the vineyard we harvested the 2010 Le Petit Sauvignon Blanc was extremely green this vintage due to the growing season. Another reason is that one of the yeasts we use to ferment the wine can lean towards a greener nose.

In order to lessen the greener notes in the 2011 and 2012 vintages we used a few fruit sources (including our estate) and have a different yeasts in different tanks and we blend at the end of fermentation. This creates complexity on the nose and palate and can sometimes lessen the greener notes.

noslensj

slm9951 wrote:Sounds good. I love SB when chilled. Why drink it any other way? No wonder it may taste flabby when warm.

Note that this was not flabby when warm. In fact it was notably crisp, even a bit tart. It turned flabby in the glass.

This is an aspect I pay attention to with crisp white wines, chilled or not; in fact it is a defining element for me in my preferences for white wine. Wines that retain their crispness and body as they warm rate highly with me.

This was one that went flabby, quickly, and at the same that it went flat some bottom end bitterness also emerged. That is not infrequent I have noted in white wines, and that is one the elements that puts a white in my personal subpar category.

Others with different tastes may feel differently. That's why I try to be descriptive in my notes, so that other people can decide intelligently for themselves.

nfurlong

noslensj wrote:The Seattle wine.wooters were having a lovely time together last Saturday, enjoying the hospitality of kittymac and each other’s company, ...

Great! I've been waiting for over a year to see signs of life in the Seattle wine woot section, only to read that you've already met!

I guess it's back to a few more months of diligent reading of the Seattle section, followed by fatigue of seeing "TBA" for the thousandth time, followed months later by another posting of "gee the Seattle group had so much fun!"

If only there was a way for people in a certain geo to register their interest. Then anyone arranging a meeting could contact those people ... no, hang on a second, there is such a list and I did post my interest!

rjquillin

nfurlong wrote:Great! I've been waiting for over a year to see signs of life in the Seattle wine woot section, only to read that you've already met!

I guess it's back to a few more months of diligent reading of the Seattle section, followed by fatigue of seeing "TBA" for the thousandth time, followed months later by another posting of "gee the Seattle group had so much fun!"

If only there was a way for people in a certain geo to register their interest. Then anyone arranging a meeting could contact those people ... no, hang on a second, there is such a list and I did post my interest!

noslensj

nfurlong wrote:Great! I've been waiting for over a year to see signs of life in the Seattle wine woot section, only to read that you've already met!

I guess it's back to a few more months of diligent reading of the Seattle section, followed by fatigue of seeing "TBA" for the thousandth time, followed months later by another posting of "gee the Seattle group had so much fun!"

If only there was a way for people in a certain geo to register their interest. Then anyone arranging a meeting could contact those people ... no, hang on a second, there is such a list and I did post my interest!

Sigh ...

If you look at the top of the page there is a tab called "Gatherings". When you complained before about missing the previous get-together (which was done on very short notice) I responded to you that the "Gatherings" tab was a good place to look for such announcements, because that is specifically why the "Gatherings" tab was created and if something was organized it would probably appear there.

This time we started with some posts in late August notifying wooters that planning was in the works and soliciting input. IIRC we mentioned that in the daily wine discussions thread. Hearing nothing, just after Labor Day we (the organizers) set a date.

And how wast notice provided? Let me count the ways:

We immediately started a thread about the get together in the "Gatherings" forum.

We also added a note about the get together in the general "Wine Woot Community Get Togethers" thread.

Notice was also posted to the "western washington woot gathering?" thread.

And, in addition, announcement of the Seattle get together was added to the periodic upcoming “wine.woot get togethers” post that periodically makes it into the daily woot wines thread.

I also bumped the "Gatherings thread a couple of times to make sure it didn't get buried to deeply on the page, with the last bump a week before the event.

I think that's pretty good coverage, certainly more than the typical wine.woot get-together typically receives.

If, after all of that, you missed the announcement because notice wasn't served to you personally ... well I don't know what to say.

*******

But wait ... If only there was a way for people in a certain geo planning a meeting to let wooters know that something is afoot. Then interested wooters could get the info and maybe even contact the organizers... no, hang on a second, there is such a place and we did made such postings.

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